Respectable definition, thank you.
I thought of a cool one earlier and decided to test it out on the ladder, and it's not too shabby. It's netted a few surprise kills against its main intended target and still has some use outside of that one poke.
Tentacruel @ Black Sludge
Trait: Rain Dish
EVs: 100 Spd / 252 HP / 156 Def
or 252 HP / 236 Def / 20 Spe
Timid Nature
or Bold
- Scald
- Hidden Power [Psychic]
- Toxic Spikes / Toxic
- Rapid Spin
I've noticed more Toxicroak on the ladder recently, and I don't know if it's just to counter Pony + Dinosaur or just a random increase, but I thought of a cool counter. Tentacruel is normally setup bait for Toxicroak, usually only carrying scald and rarely ice beam, but with HP psychic the tables have completely been turned (unless Toxicroak has earthquake for some odd reason). Exploiting Toxicroak's 4x weakness to psychic, Tentacruel can now deal a huge amount of damage to Toxicroak with no investment, and a decent chunk to fighting types such as Breloom, Keldeo, and Conkeldurr (without giving it the guts boost too).
The first EV spread I provided is a custom one I made to outspeed jolly Mamoswine, which subsequently lets you outspeed adamant Toxicroak and jolly Breloom. You can choose to ignore it and use the standard bulky spread if you'd like, as the loss in bulk is very noticeable.
Calcs:
0 SpAtk Tentacruel Hidden Power Psychic vs 0 HP/0 SpDef Toxicroak: 78.18% - 92.51% (2 hits to KO)
0 SpAtk Tentacruel Hidden Power Psychic vs 0 HP/0 SpDef Breloom: 48.28% - 57.47% (2-3 hits to KO)
0 SpAtk Tentacruel Hidden Power Psychic vs 0 HP/0 SpDef Keldeo: 28.48% - 34.06% (3-4 hits to KO)
0 SpAtk Tentacruel Hidden Power Psychic vs 252 HP/0 SpDef Conkeldurr: 28.99% - 34.3% (3-4 hits to KO) (watch out for sheer force T-punch)
With hp psychic you don't
have to rely on the scald burn for Breloom and Keldeo, but scald is often the better option anyway just in case they want to switch out. Shows how stupid scald is, but I'll save that for another time. ;)